8.4 Public-Private Partnerships

Lead Agencies must demonstrate how they encourage partnerships among other public agencies, Tribal organizations, private entities, faith-based organizations, businesses, or organizations that promote business involvement, and/or community-based organizations to leverage existing service delivery (i.e., cooperative agreement among providers to pool resources to pay for shared fixed costs and operation) to leverage existing child care and early education service delivery systems and to increase the supply and quality of child care services for children younger than age 13. 8.4.1 Lead Agency public-private partnerships Identify and describe any public-private partnerships encouraged by the Lead Agency to leverage public and private resources to further the goals of CCDF: Transforming the early childhood system will take time, intentionality through purposeful changes in the system, and significant resources— supported through public investments, business contributions, and philanthropy. The California Department of Social Services (CDSS) seeks to leverage public and private resources to further the goals of the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act. Our partnerships with local governments, housing/community development agencies, and developers can bring additional quality and ample resources to ensure we build a comprehensive and equitable early learning and care system over the next decade. The David and Lucile Packard Foundation awarded CDSS a $60,000 grant to aid in CDSS’ development of strategic frameworks that are informed by Child Care and Development Division (CCDD) staff. These funds were used by CCDD to develop an internal framework for organizational structure and an external framework for stakeholder outreach. Other CDSS partnerships with philanthropy include $2.9 million in public-private funding committed to by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and Heising-Simons Foundation. A portion of these investments has been directed towards the creation of a Consumer Education website, which is a merger of our existing child care search website and various local resource and referral information into a single site. The website will serve parents, providers/licensees, and the state needs to ensure access to quality child care and policy related information. The CDSS is using this funding to contract these services with the California Child Care Resource & Referral Network (The Network). Our partnership with Heising-Simons is also supporting our Subsidized Provider Reports (SPR) efforts to streamline our data collection. These partnerships also support our work in the development of internal and external frameworks with Center for Law And Social Policy on presumptive eligibility. Another partnership CDSS has is with New Venture Fund, and this partnership supports our collaboration with the Child Care Law Center as a consultant on our efforts towards Rate Reform. Our partnerships expand beyond just financial investments as CDSS meets regularly with both private and public organizations regarding our commonly shared goals for the early learning and care system.